


How To Save A Life

by scuttlesworth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scuttlesworth/pseuds/scuttlesworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Watson's got everything, except anyone who cares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Save A Life

It's late. It's always late in the mornings. She drinks half the bottle of cola in a few swigs, and refills it with dark rum. The colors are a perfect match, the rum smells spicy more than boozy, and she's done this so many times she doesn't spill a drop despite her shaking hands. 

A couple more swigs and the shakes ease up. There. All better. Good for what ails you. Rum always makes her think of dark-skinned slave women in flickering torchlight, sugarcane at their backs, in a hot Caribbean night somewhere. And pirates and the history of the Empire, a grand horrible tapestry of history and here she is letting it burn down her throat like fire. Like medicine. 

She pulls on her perfectly pressed black jacket over her bright silky shirt, slides her feet into low black heels (these days even being a dyke isn't what it used to be; no penny loafers or motorcycle boots, no, these days even she wears a bit of lipstick. Getting old, luv, have to make the best of a bad job.) Grabs up her soda bottle and her briefcase and her purse and heads out with a jingle of keys. 

Time to work. 

 

At work things are fine, normal, good. She walks the hallways briskly, nodding, checking in the departments. She's good, she really is. Knows them all by name, feeling sharp. Gets the job done, she does. Easy with the men, friendly with the women but nothing unprofessional. She's feeling the buzz of satisfaction in her own competence when she strides through her office door (as much as a short, slightly overweight, somewhat past middle-aged woman can stride) and who the fuck is this sitting in her black leather ergonomic office chair? 

She is going to rip Lucy a new arsehole for letting this wanker in here. The secretary is usually so competent, but there's no way some lanky prat should be poking around in her desk drawers without so much as a by-your-leave, and Lucy knows it. Her eyes narrow and her mouth opens and she's ready to give him the lecture of his life when he spins around and looks at her, looks at the soda in her hand and tuts, and suddenly she's terrified he knows. 

"Spiced rum," he says, and his tone is gently mocking and disappointed. She whirls and slams her office door and stalks over, leaning on her own desk to loom at him. 

"And who the fuck are you?" she snarls. He blinks at her. 

He's got pale tilted eyes behind glasses with a thick black frame, oatmeal-colored hair shorn short. A tweed jacket should never look stylish. Would never look stylish on her, not in a million years. And yet somehow the one he's wearing does, and that brings a furious resentment crashing front and center in her heart. She's worked for this job, given blood and sweat and tears and relationships, she's damn good, and no public-school prat in a suit will steal it form her. She's all set to tell him all of this when he purses his lips at her and says "Right, off to detox then," and he's up and hauling her along by the arm like a runaway bride, and she's back out the doors she just came in through. The faces turned towards her are avid; why is she being walked out? Who's the man? But it passes, and in seconds they're in a private car heading god alone knows where.

They sit together in the back, driver silent in front. Her kidnapper's got a mobile out, checking something. She twists in the seat. She was paralyzed in the office, struck silent by the gazes of her colleagues. All those years working towards respect, towards success, she couldn't bear to have her shame hauled out in front of them. She opens her mouth to speak but he gets there first, talking fast, tone dripping with boredom. "They'll be told you're going away to a management seminar. One month paid. You spend the whole time actively working towards your recovery and they never learn any different." Her jaw is hanging slack, and he turns his pale gaze on her. After a long moment, his lips twitch. "Problem?" 

She shakes her head. No. Settles back in her seat. He turns back to his mobile, texting fast and furious. She thinks of a video she saw on the internet, 12 year old Japanese girls texting at a speed no grown adult could replicate. She'd made a joke about quick fingers then, a crude one. 

They are silent for the rest of the drive. It ends in the middle of nowhere at a giant old house, all stone and green lawns, with a discrete sign telling the world it's a recuperation centre. The drive is gravel and long, the hills extend away behind the main building to the horizon. The driver hauls her own suitcase out of the trunk, and she opens her mouth to ask where he got it from but she knows where. He got it from her closet. How, that's another matter, and she closes her mouth with a snap. The driver puts it down in the gravel, and the tall man strides away towards the front door, leaving her to struggle along in his wake with a bag that's heavier than she expected. 

She has no idea why he's doing this. None at all. Why would anyone bother with her? She's an aging alcoholic financial consultant. Her work loves her productivity, but does not love her. Her girlfriend dumped her a long time ago, and no-one has cared since then. Her only family lives in London and they do not speak - 

Her mind stutters to a halt. John. She says it out loud, testing. "John." 

The man flinches. It's small, but because she's looking she sees it anyways. 

He stops walking. She leaves the bloody case and steps up beside him. His face is stone. 

"He's going to need you," the man says, quietly. She stays silent. The man turns his eyes on her again and he's mad, she can see he's mad. Completely insane. But sad, too. Sad like her brother. 

Her stupid fucking brother. The one who caught her drinking when she was sixteen and had a screaming, shouting, arm-waving argument with her about it, but never turned her in to mum and da. The one who, on a bet, jumped off the shed on the school cricket pitch, and didn't so much as twist his ankle, and won twenty quid from the other boys who said he wouldn't. The one who distracted da that time he got drunk and took the hit meant for her. The one who took her first serious girlfriend out to the movies and their long talk turned into an all-night songfest, and he said it was for her own good. The one who pulled her out of the car she put in the ditch after the really nasty domestic with Clara. The one who watched, tears falling down his face as the towers fell, who gave up his career to fuck off to some desert in the middle of nowhere and fight in a war and get shot. The one she never spoke to anymore. Not sober. 

This is a friend of John's. A good friend, if he even knows her name. They might be siblings, but she knows John will never speak about her to anyone. She's his shame. She's a mess, always has been, a drunk with the willpower of a custard creme and all the conscience of a Rottweiler. And the mad sad bastard is paying for this, this whatever it is - recovery center? And covering for her at work, and she doesn't know how he's managed that bit at all. They're a sharp bunch, her management, no slouches when it comes to getting the most out of people. But somehow he's got to them and this is for her, this is some sort of present. Because he knows her brother and thinks her brother is going to need her. Her. Harry the drunk. Harry the hairy-legged lesbian. Exactly how bad can things get, before she's the solution to any problem at all? 

But he's serious. So instead of flaying him alive with words, she nods, and looks at the building. After a moment, she goes back, and gets her bag, and hauls it along, and instead of walking ahead of her the tall bastard walks beside her. He doesn't help with the suitcase, and his face might as well be carved from marble for all the expression he has while he checks her in, but Harry learned a long time ago not to judge folks by anything but their deeds. 

They show her to a room. The ceiling slopes down towards the window, and she has a view of the front lawn. The walls are mint green and the bedspread is beige, a waffle-pattern. It's nice. Not like a hospital at all. She thinks, I want a drink, sadly, and the first wave of knowledge she's been suppressing - that there will be no drinks here - breaks over her. She thinks of this place, hospital, and thinks of all the stories of alkies drinking rubbing alcohol, and how it wrecks your liver and your kidneys, and her mouth waters. 

She lets it all be too much for a minute. And then she stiffens her spine, thinks "It's long past time you grew up, Harry Watson," and turns to the door to meet her first appointment of the morning.


End file.
